A blog a day (#25)

I MISS YOU

Have you ever told anyone, "I miss you" when you didn't see them for sometime, or didn't hear from them in a while? Have you informed them of your desire to remain in touch with them, either meeting in person, or speaking with them, or receiving a message, an email, or just a "Hi!"? I am not much of a sociable person. I do not go out of my way to establish contact, maintain the contact, or remain in touch with many acquaintances; but friends is a different story.

I  miss my elder sister, Dr. Shanti, whom we all lost in 1985. It has been 35 years since she left us, but hardly a day passes when I do not remember her fondly and miss her. But did I tell her that I missed hearing from her when she was alive and well? I wrote letters to her and she to me; and I have preserved some of them. Their value to me increased manyfold once she left us. I keep in touch with my other sisters and nephews and nieces often and when we haven't exchanged any messages or haven't spoken in a while, we do get in touch over phone and talk. But I hardly say, "I missed you!" though in my heart I feel that I missed them.

My elder son, Anirudh, lives in Bangalore and says quite often over phone when we speak, "I miss you both (my wife and I)." I hadn't thought much of that statement of his till today, but now I understand the import of why he says those words and what I should say in response. i have never heard my father say those words, nor I remember saying them to my parents when they were alive and I was living elsewhere. Those three words would have made a world of difference to them, I think. I miss you appa and amma!

I miss you may be a romantic way of a couple who have been apart and I am no romantic, nor have I ever romanced anyone to have said this to any person of the opposite sex. My reference in this blog is with respect to missing a friend, a relative, an associate, or a colleague. What happens when we say, "I missed you"? What would be their reaction to a comment like that? Said in all sincerity and honesty, I am sure the other person would feel elated and happy. What if we don't say that, but nod our head, say, "Hello! Hope you are doing well," and pass on? What would the other person feel? Do both the greetings mean the same thing? In my honest opinion, saying, "I missed you" would mean more to the other person than a mere greeting.

While I was studying for my masters programme, there was a subject "Organisation and Methods", which referred to the study of office procedures with an aim to simplify the work. There was one topic, Forms design. This referred to the study and analysis of "office forms" and examining the design and layout. Additionally we would need to also see the number of copies of the forms circulated to various people and what they did with their copy! More often than not, multiple copies with colour codes could be simply reduced by eliminating one or more copies and examining if the "recipient" missed his or her copy. If there was no word, it would be obvious that they didn't need the copy! If they did, they would come back and ask for it and their copy could be restored. One way of saying to the copy of the report, "I missed you!"

In my quest to complete writing a blog a day for 100 days, I intentionally missed writing a blog yesterday (blog #24). I expected a few of my regular readers to get back to me with a message asking if I had forgotten to post that in my WhatsApp status and in Facebook? Except my younger sister, Raji, no one else missed my blog! That is what prompted me to write on this topic!

Do you miss me?